The University of Minnesota lost almost $16,000 last year on alcohol sales at football games, despite selling more than $900,000 worth of beer and wine.

Proving that there's nothing too goddamn ridiculous to assert in public in a laughable attempt to save face, Minnesota responds!

University officials say it was never the intent that the school turn a profit on alcohol sales.

Jim Delany has taught you well, Minnesota.

Do you like pictures of oily men not wearing very much? Have I got some instagram for you, ladies and men hopeful Frank Clark is going to be superbad this year. Before and after winter conditioning, here's Devin Gardner and Frank Clark:

I certainly hope this prediction is worthless since you seem to have something more pressing to do. Man with no more knowledge of basketball than random Rome caller picks Michigan to Elite Eight. Happens to be president, so people note it. Watch for upcoming Graham Couch column on how Obama is racist!

Obama chose Indiana, Ohio State and Louisville as his other Final Four teams [to go with Florida].

That's what you get for going to Kroger, man. Mandatory scan-your-card grocery stores FTL, amirite?

Aw man but we're just a four seed. Jeff Goodman runs down the list of teams with the most NBA talent and starts in Ann Arbor:

Trey Burke (G, 6-0, 190): The sophomore is a National Player of the Year candidate and also could be the first point guard taken in the June draft. He can shoot it, distribute, and will be ideal at the next level in pick-and-roll situations. Most NBA executives have him going somewhere among the lottery selections.

Glenn Robinson III (F, 6-6, 210): The Big Dog's son still needs another year in college, but he's intriguing. He's long and athletic and has shown spurts in which he's looked phenomenal. He still needs to shoot it more consistently from the perimeter and also play hard all the time, but he'd likely be a first-rounder if he left after this season.

Tim Hardaway Jr. (G, 6-6, 205): Another ex-NBA player's kid, Hardaway Jr. has improved his decision-making. He has nice length for a wing player, but still needs to improve his ability to put the ball on the floor. Likely pegged somewhere in the second round.

Stauskas and McGary also mentioned. But hey, at least we're a four-seed instead of an eight like #2 NC State. Mark Gottfried may be a terrible coach, but I remember thinking that about Thad Matta a few years ago and… uh… no. I will reserve judgment this time around.

This may be why. Even when talking about dangerous mid-majors in the tourney, Luke Winn manages to rope you in with interesting Michigan-related stats. Like this one:

Michigan isn't just the least experienced team in the tourney, they're the least by a mile.

SDSU is included at #8. Winn says watch out for this business:

The Wolters Special is a left-hand hesitation dribble, followed by a drive left and a righty floater/runner.

That's alarmingly Burke-like.

Aw man but they're an eight seed. A tip of the hat to Robert Morris despite their fans' failure to chant "N-E-C" last night after they knocked off the NIT's top seed Kentucky in a first round game at the Colonial's 3500-seat arena. (Rupp has NCAA games this weekend so Kentucky did not bid to host.) Even with the missed opportunity, Robert Morris set the irritating meme about "perception" harming the NCAA fates of SEC bubble teams on fire.

“I wish I knew,” he said. “It’s unfortunate. I would say a lack of respect more than anything. When you have a second-place team at this level (Kentucky and Alabama finished second in the SEC and will join UT in the NIT), it’s almost like a mid-major mentality in this league. When your second-place team doesn’t get in the NCAA tournament — this is a BCS league, it’s one of the best league’s [sic] in the country — that just shouldn’t happen.” …

“When you look at Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky,” he added, “those are NCAA tournament teams; they’re just not playing in the NCAA tournament.”

If the SEC had actually beaten anybody in the nonconference maybe we could talk here. Florida got a three-seed thanks in part to wins over Wisconsin, Marquette, and I guess Middle Tennessee. Missouri got in comfortably with wins over VCU and Illinois. The entire rest of the league had three (three) wins over teams that got an at-large bid to the tourney, those Arkansas over Oklahoma in the midst of a 1-4 slide against BCS teams (and at home, obviously), Alabama over Villanova on a neutral floor, and Tennessee beating Wichita State at home.

The ACC is also bitching about a lack of respect, Rodney Dangerfield-style. If that's the case, the ACC is suffering a lack of respect from every-damn-body on the internet. Of 120(!) brackets tracked by the Bracket Matrix, all of seven had Virginia in them.

It is not that hard to predict this stuff, as Andy Glockner points out in excellent article. It's no secret how to game the RPI: don't lose at home, play some road games, and if you have to play a really bad team make sure they're not D-I. Glockner points out an imbalance in the RPI's home-road adjustment I hadn't thought about:

Almost a decade ago, the NCAA made an adjustment to the RPI formula to try to incentivize teams to play more road games. Of course, they screwed up the math such that the new formula rewards “not losing at home” more than it does “winning on the road,” at least for what its primary purpose is: sorting teams that may make the NCAAs.

The formula adjustment for Factor I (your winning percentage) now credits you with 0.6 wins for a home win and 1.4 wins for a road victory. Likewise, you get 1.4 home losses for an actual home defeat and 0.6 losses for an away loss. That sounds like a reasonable plan until you realize that the target demographic — NCAA tournament-caliber teams — are all way above .500. As such, when you split two games (.500 overall), you want that impact to be as small as possible on your overall adjusted record, as determined by the RPI formula.

If you win at home and lose the away game, you would get an extra 0.6-0.6 added into your overall adjusted record. If you do it the other way, you get 1.4-1.4 added to your totals. If you are well above .500 overall, like all these NCAA caliber teams are, adding the 1.4-1.4 into the record drags you down more than the 0.6-0.6 does. In simple terms, losing home games (for 1.4 losses in your adjusted Factor I) is the worst thing you can do, and it’s way more harmful than adding 1.4 wins to the ledger is helpful.

He also mentions that the committee did to some extent see through the Mountain West's conference-wide Game of RPIs*, dropping New Mexico and their on-paper case for a one seed down to a three and giving the rest of the league seeds that portend a second-round exit.

Yeah, it is perception that the ACC is down and the SEC is worse than the Mountain West. An accurate one.

“This is the beginning,” said Gene Kimmelman, a former senior antitrust official at the Justice Department. “If the conflict between cable distributors and content owners persists and prices keep rising, there will be enormous market pressure to begin unbundling offerings, give consumers more choices and, from my perspective, ultimately let consumers control what they buy and how much they pay.”

They're not talking about their athletic department as a whole making money. They mean that Minnesota actually spent more money obtaining the beer/wine (and covering related costs) than it made selling it.

I find it amusing that they insisted on charging $7.25 per cup of beer. Not $7. They had to get that extra quarter.

mentions that Minnesota lost this money due to paying for things like increased security and hiring additional workers. They also mention that about $30,000 was spent in one-time only expendetures and henceforth they expect a profit next year.

They managed to give older fans something they would enjoy, (I doubt this is changing students' drinking habbits) and they are going to be able to turn a small profit in the end. I am not sure why we are making fun of them...?

I'll laugh at how Minnesota burns money more than anyone, but I'm not sure that was the full quote. They weren't expecting to make a profit in the first year. The law allowing them to sell beer was passed pretty late--I believe a game or two into the season--and they didn't have the infrastructure set up to sell it themselves, so they contracted the job out to a third party, knowing that their cost would probably only allow them to break about even on alcohol sales. Next year, when they take over the operation themselves, they should make a lot more money.

If you really want stupid, look into the politicking and grandstanding that went into beer being served there in the first place.

If we're to assume 1 beer per head at $7, they should gross $350K per game (or $2.45mil/year) in beer sales.

There's no reason to assume that. The article states that Minnesota took in a total of $907,000 in revenue (for the season) from alcohol sales. Apparently, Gopher fans weren't too interested in buying crappy beer for $7.25 a cup.

Minnesota only sold beer in limited sections of the stadium. As I recall only one end zone with a limited amount of seats were close to the beer stands. The rest of the stadium would had to walk a long distance to have access to the beer.

If you actually go to the source WSJ article, Fios wants to negotiate on the fees they pay to the channels (specifically smaller/ mid-tier). Note, the BTN is partly owned by Fox, and would be bundled with the Fox channels (FX, Fox News, Fox Sports...) so they are not a smaller/ mid tier player.

This has nothing to do with a customer saying, I don't watch Channels X, Y, & Z, so knock $2/ month off my bill.

You're correct, but the long term implication is that the pressure to offer a la carte television, particularly for sports channels, will become nearly unbearable. ESPN has paid a lot of money for broadcast rights and is making it back by increasing subscriber fees for everyone.

The bottom line is that I've cut cable in exchange for a $7.99 Netflix subscription and I enjoy it much more. The only time I miss it is during Michigan games. As fees increase, more and more people will do this--resulting in higher fees. It's an unsustainable business model that will result in television dollars decreasing for the conferences, which ultimately kills the BCS conference's business model.

I think the big money era in college sports is nearing a peak. 10-15 years from now, the money will be going down and the second tier schools will be out of cash.

And I may or may not use torrents to supplement. The issue is live sports. In an age where everything can be decoupled, networks and cablecos will not give up live sports. It's like now. We can watch streams, but they are sooty and not in HD.

Remembering how I was as a college kid and how easy it was to add weight, I don't doubt that Clark earned that body naturally. But my gawd, he looks ginormous for a DE. Will be interesting to see how he plays this year given the loss of Ryan and some of the uncertainty on the line. He needs to make a move pretty soon.

Not a big surprise that MSU fans would try to troll UM fans in the game, but kind of silly that people are paying rush order prices to wear a shirt for 3 hours. And despite all the talk of an upset, there is a very good chance UM will win that game, at which point all you've proven is that you can't spend your money wisely.

I hate when people don't flex in the before, but then flex like Mr. Universe after. Either flex for both, or don't flex for both. Either way, it looks like strength and conditioning is doing good things.

I mentioned this in one of the practice video threads, but you could tell from that video that Frank Clark clearly added the bulk of his mass to his legs and butt. I'm sure he bulked up his upper body too (it's hard to add that much mass without) but he added most of thay weight below the waist which will make him a very powerful edge rusher.

Those are thee most NSFW pics I've seen on this site, yet! Tongue in cheek, but seriously, would you rather be at work and someone see over your shoulder pictures of Kate Upton in a swimsuit or someone see half-naked pictures of giant Division 1 football players, on your computer screen?!